I’ve heard some exaggerated claims like, “Every word is pronounced exactly how it’s spelled,” or “Each letter is always pronounced the same way.” That’s normally true, but it’s not always the case.
Posts published in “Pronunciation”
Letter G It is pronounced like the English /g/ in ‘god’; ‘golf’, and never the /g/ in ‘giraffe’. Examples gigi – tooth/teeth guru – teacher…
The letter /h/ is pronounced like the English /h/ in ‘hen’, ‘home’. This can occur in the initial, medial and final positions. H in Initial…
Letter C Do you know how to Pronounce ‘C’ in Sambal ABC, the chilli sauce? For the most part the spelling of Indonesian is regular…
Ng It is pronounced like the English /ng/ in ‘sing’; ‘king’. Examples ngantuk – sleepy tangan – hand datang – arrive Ng + g =…
A combination of /a/ and /i/ becomes a two-vowel sound and the diphthongs Unfortunately there is no way of knowing whether the combination of this…
Letter(Grapheme) and sound(phoneme) are 2(two) different things. The following examples show different ways to pronounce the letter /e/ for different words in Indonesian language. Saya…
Abbreviations are often used in Indonesian. There are literally thousands of commonly used acronyms and abbreviations, and they pop up in profusion in every domain…
For the most part the spelling of Indonesian is regular and fairly faithfully follows the sounds of the language. But there is one letter in Indonesian that represents a different sound from what is usually represented by the same letter in English.
Like the English plosive consonants /t/ and /p/, the sound /k/ in English is usually heavily aspirated. You can hear the puff of air that…
In Indonesia, most people (but by no means all people) trill or roll the consonant /r/. Some English-speaking learners find this hard to do, but…
In the speech of most native-speakers of English, the /p/ sound, like /t/, is heavily aspirated, that is, in most sentence environments it is pronounced…